Today, something a little different from one of my usual blog posts. I recently came across this fascinating story and I couldn’t resist posting it. I don’t know if this is genuine or not but have a read and judge for yourself!
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS, President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:
On March 23,1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Mr Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect, indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his fall to certain death was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window which killed him instantly.
Neither the shooter, nor the descender, were aware that a safety net had recently been installed just below at the eighth-floor level to protect some construction workers who had commenced maintenance work and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.
"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as having committed suicide."
The fact that Mr. Opus was shot on the way to what he intended to be certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, from whence the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly couple and their son. Further investigations revealed the couple had been arguing vigorously just prior to the incident and the elderly man admitted to threatening his wife with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the bullets went through the window, fatally striking Mr. Opus.
Dr. Mills explained that when one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is nonetheless guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge, both the old man and his wife were adamant that they believed the shotgun to be unloaded. The old man gave a statement to Police to the effect that it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun during heated arguments. He had no intention to murder his wife. Therefore, the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be a tragic accident; that is, provided it could be established that the gun had somehow been accidentally loaded.
The continuing investigation however turned up a witness who claimed to have seen the old couple's son, who lived with the couple, loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. Further investigations would reveal that the elderly woman had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing of the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, had deliberately loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the couple’s son.
The couple’s son, as it transpires, was in fact Ronald Opus, who had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window on his way down. Mr. Opus had in fact murdered himself. The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
Now when I read this, I was skeptical but I keep an open mind. Seems too crazy to be true, but then again it’s so crazy that it just might be true. Reading this reminded me of the line by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie “No Country for Old Men” when asked if the story he was telling was a true story, he replied “Well, I can’t vouch for every single detail, but it’s true to say that it is a story!”
Regardless of whether it’s true or not, I think it’s a perfect tale of Karma. Think of it as a parable, the moral of the story is, whatever you do in life is going to be coming right back at you. Do good, because you’d rather have good coming back at then bullets!
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